Get a Speed Boost on Chrome with Profile Guided Optimization

Google’s upcoming Chrome build, Chrome 55, will come with some improvements to make Google’s browser less of a resource hog. In the meantime, the company has implemented a something else to speed up Chrome: Profile Guided Optimization.

Originally a feature found on Microsoft’s Visual Studio developer tools, Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) is a technology that tracks user interaction with an application.

Some functions are used more, others less. With PGO, functions that are used more often will be optimized for speed, while less-used functions are optimized with smaller, slightly slower code. The result is a smaller overall code footprint and a faster Chrome.

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Optimizations are also done to the memory location of the code as PGO would move rarely-used functions away from those that are frequently-used. This results in better management of the CPU instruction cache by avoiding caching of less-used code, resulting in better performance.

PGO impact on load and startup time
New tab page load time	14.8% faster
Page load (time to first paint)	5.9% faster
Startup time	16.8% faster

In terms of numbers, a Chrome build that has PGO would be 15% faster overall on Windows compared to a Chrome build without PGO.

For those who are fans of better performing Chrome browsers, Build 53 is what you’re looking for if you use the 64-bit version of Chrome. If you’re on a 32-bit version of the browser, Build 54 is the build to go for.

With PGO now available on current Chrome builds, and with Chrome 55 coming soon, it seems that Google has finally decided to cut some fat off of its browser, something that has been long overdue.